Monday--

Wet outside this morning so I won't have to water early.  The rain we were supposed to have yesterday never materialized so I watered the sunflowers.  Everything else was fine.  They say we should have sun until showers later but we'll see.  Weather reports have been anything but accurate.

Well, the notion that I wouldn't have to water was a fantasy.  I have some big plants in some big containers but they do seem to dry out fast.  I collected the cupcake squash and a Barese Cucumber.  We are trying out the latter for supper today.  Also took out a pretty well spent tumbler tomato but left the Red Robin which shows some new fruit forming.  I saw a number of tomatoes I need to take tomorrow and some trimming I should do.  Maybe I will leave the trimming for Wednesday.  I also pulled the peas.  Nice idea but I don't think I will repeat the experiment.

We turned off the morning news very early this morning.  Too time much taken up by the unapologetic Donald and Patrick Kane's latest legal mess.  Let the latter issue make its way through the system and recognize the former for what it is--a distraction.  I had a thought as they went on about Trump this morning and a couple of the "second" tier candidates complained about the attention Trump is getting.  Perhaps that is exactly what the Republican party wants.  After all, consider what the debates aren't mentioning as Trump blows his nonsense over the airwaves.  Damned little about the economy.  Damned little about our (in)justice system.  Damned little about our (mis)education system.  Damned little about the environment.  And damned little chance that the others will make a serious gaff and reveal whatever the party (and its owners--the .01%, the big banks and global companies) really want to saddle the rest of us with.  As Robert Heinlein once wrote "In a government of the people, by the people, for the people--don't tell the people."  There are more ways than official secrecy to not tell the people.

It has been a summer for unusually bad heat waves.  This piece from the Daily Mirror has a video of a car melting in a northern Italian town where the temperature hit 37C.  That is 98.6F.  Another report says the heat wave has broken with severe thunderstorms in other areas of Italy. Reuters and ABC news reports that the electric supplier in Poland has cut power to industrial customers as the temperatures there hit 39C.  Their coal-fired power plants don't have enough water to cool them and levels in the Vistula and other rivers are so low transportation along the rivers is down.